tammylc
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Posts posted by tammylc
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you can use corn syrup in place of glucose but It's not the same thing.
Most , if not all of the time, glucose is derived from wheat.
I'm curious why wilton would label something one thing then call it another.
What are you making?
Most of the glucose I've seen for sale in the US is corn syrup. Although it can be derived from other starches, corn is cheap in the US, and used for sweeteners whenever possible.
Glucose is different from the Karo/light corn syrup that is (I assume) what you have in your pantry. If you look at the ingredient list for that, it's got corn syrup, high-fructose corn syrup, water, vanilla and salt.
Depending on the recipe, sometimes you can substitute one for the other without much problem. There's a thread on that very question somewhere in this forum.
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Heartland Gathering Bread Class
Friday, August 8th
Well, folks, we're only about 3 weeks away and we haven't been able to secure a location for a full-day workshop.
Just a suggestion: A few years ago, I stayed in the Residence Inn, and our "mini suite" had a full kitchen with a range. There are also other long-stay type hotels in the area that also offer kitchens with ovens. So you might look into renting a room at a place like that (or two, which would get two kitchens with two ovens).
As I recall, we booked our Residence Inn room through the Marriott web site and we wound up there because it was as cheap as anything else. So you could sleep there and have the workshop too.
That's a very clever idea!
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Heartland Gathering Cooks Update
Course Cooks
Tino - Bread
nyokie6/LAZ - cheese
HOLLY_L - chicken liver pate
tammylc - Amuse
Alex - Soup
CaliPoutine - Salad
Marmish - Salad or Side
LAZ - something mostly prepared in advance
Lucky Girl - Beets 3 Ways or something else
santo_grace - Cold Shrimp dish or Corn/Bacon/Cream dish
Ronnie Suburban - BBQ
NancyH/Bob/Edsel - Meat
Jean Blanchard, Kerry Beal, CaliPoutine - Dessert
Sous Cooks
Fresser
KarenM
Prsantrin
White Lotus
Dance
Chris (tino27's +1)
Possible Components people could bring prepared if cooks want them
Fig jam - CaliPoutine
Caponata - Jean Blanchard
Pacific Northwest treats - White Lotus & Dance
Tea - White Lotus
We're still looking for a wine shopper. Is there anyone interested in that?
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Ronnie, you can confirm me for the Blackbird dinner, but my +1 won't be making it. But we will be 2 for the Violet Hour. And it'll just be me on Friday.
Thanks!
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Jeni's Ice Creams in Columbus, OH makes great ice cream sandwiches. (They're not listed on the website, though.) The cookie is meringue based somehow, and flavored to complement the ice cream filling.
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I'd like to go on the ethnic food tour, if possible.
Am I to understand that it's not possible to do the ethnic food tour and go shopping with the larger group? If so, maybe I can stay in touch with Tammy via cell phone and pick up any ethnic ingredients that would be useful for the dinner. Or am I misunderstanding the schedule?
I think we're going to have to have some communication with the various cooks to see who wants to shop where, as I'm also interested in the ethnic food tour. Or maybe we can have an early first pass at the Farmer's Market and then split off for the ethnic food tour.
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I've not used them, so I can't comment on the usability. But they're definitely not very cost effective relative to the cocoa butters - $22 for 100 ml vs $19.50 for 200 ml. And I wonder what they're using for propellant and how food safe it is?
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The colored cocoa butters from Chef Rubber are very good. But it sounds like you're referring to something else? Can you link to the actual product you're interested in?
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My Sunday will be the 20th, actually. Anything special going on that night?
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I've just made travel plans so I will be attending. Sign me up for wherever I'll be most helpful/least destructive. P.S. Staying at Best Western University Plaza in Evanston.
I'll be happy to have you in your usual role as my partner in crime on the expediting front. I'd been worried about doing this on on my own, glad you're going to be able to make it!
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If it would be okay, transfer me to doing the cheese course. I would enjoy doing that and if anyone else has some homemade or bought thing that they like with cheese they can add them. I will provide cheeses, crackers sliced fruits and some nuts.
Tobi
PS we're in Europe right now, I'll try to bring some cheese home from France with me to add to what I get in Chicago.
If you're willing to collaborate, I can do some of the cheese shopping. I have a wonderful source for artisanal American cheeses here in Chicago. (Unfortunately, too far from Evanston to work in a visit or I'd try to arrange it.)
What kind of budget would we have?
Unknown at this point, I haven't started running any numbers yet. Probably somewhere in the $100-$150 range?
We should be careful in thinking about the cheese course. It's often been our downfall. Served as pre-dinner noshing, everyone is too full for dinner. Served after dinner, we rarely make a dent with the typical quantities purchased. I'd recommend planning on no more than 1 oz per person, or around 5.5 lbs total.
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I'm looking for dinner recommendation for a Sunday and Tuesday night. I'm staying at the Sheraton Madison Hotel located at 706 John Nolen Drive, I'm not familiar with Madison so I don't know where that fits into the city or other recommendations given here. We won't have a car, so walking distance is best, cab is okay. I like all different kinds of food. Sunday night I'd be looking for something on the upscale side, Tuesday could be ethnic or otherwise interesting.
Thanks!
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Emmalish - is the chocolate on the pretzels thicker than on the caramels? Because I've had chocolate that was too thick bloom, I think because the heat generated as it starts to set drives the rest out of temper.
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Heartland Gathering Cooks Update
Course Cooks
Tino - Bread
tammylc - Amuse
Alex - Soup
CaliPoutine - Salad
Marmish - Salad or Side
LAZ - something mostly prepared in advance
Lucky Girl - Beets 3 Ways or something else
santo_grace - Cold Shrimp dish or Corn/Bacon/Cream dish
Ronnie Suburban - BBQ
NancyH/Bob/Edsel - Meat
Jean Blanchard, Kerry Beal, CaliPoutine - Dessert
nyokie6 - Dessert or Pasta
Sous Cooks
Fresser
KarenM
Prsantrin
Possible Components people could bring prepared if cooks want them
Fig jam - CaliPoutine
Caponata - Jean Blanchard
I can already see some groupings coming together - we could serve CaliPoutine and Marmish's salads side by side. The corn/bacon/cream dish would probably go well with Ronnie's BBQ. Things will no doubt change on site depending on what people end up making, but I see lots of potential.
I've put people who were undecided on if they wanted to be a head cook onto the sous cooks list. The limiting factor on number of courses (besides our stomachs!) is likely to be managing oven and stovetop space. I think we're at a good number now, but we could certainly add a couple more, so don't hesitate to speak up. CaliPoutine has suggested a cheese course - does anyone want to take charge of shopping for that? We could put it out with dessert, or as afternoon noshing.
Do we have any wine aficionados attending? We'll be devoting some of our budget to wine/beverage purchases for the group, and if there was a team of 2 or 3 people who wanted to be responsible for doing that shopping, that would be another great way to participate!
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Cooks and potential cooks - please read these important note on expanding meals to feed 90 people!
With so many courses and so many dishes, the best way to think of this meal is as a tasting menu. So you should be thinking in tasting menu portions. For example - if your corn/cream/bacon dish would usually serve 4 as a side dish to a main course, you should consider it to serve ~12 for sizing purposes in the scale of our group meal. If you are planning to do a pasta dish, you should be allocating only 1 oz of dried pasta per person, and sizing the rest of your recipe to that measure. This should make the prospect of cooking for this many people much less stressful, I hope!
Cooks should check in with me before shopping so that I can review your purchasing plans and give you some feedback on your sizing. Let's plan to have a cook's meeting on Friday night. I believe I'll also be the one doling out the money to cooks to spend.
In terms of presentation, I have to check with Ronnie re. the table configuration of the church, but for argument's sake, let's assume we have rounds of 10, so you'll be plating up 9 family style plates each for 10 people. You will have to make a very persuasive argument to me to do individual plating - if you have a composed dish, think about how you might be able to present 10 portions on a large platter instead.
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Ethnic shopping tour?
If anyone is interested, I'd be glad to lead a tour of ethnic stores in Niles, either Friday during the day or in lieu of the farmers' market on Saturday morning. (The Evanston market is a fine market, but I doubt it's significantly different from farmers' markets in your hometown.) Niles, about 5 miles west of Evanston, offers one of the most diverse ethnic shopping experiences in Chicagoland, with about 50 different food stores, including:
I think that's a great idea! I might be interested, assuming we can arrange things to get back to the church in a reasonable time for those of us who are in charge of a course. Other head cooks should think about if they would want to shop for their courses at the Farmer's Market or join the ethnic excursion, because we'll need to coordinate some of the meal planning around that.
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I totally want to learn from the doctor. Please count me in. (And let me know what you need me to bring.)
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Heartland Gathering Cooks Update
Course Cooks
Tino - Bread
tammylc - Amuse
Alex - Soup
CaliPoutine - Salad
Marmish - Salad or Side
NancyH/Bob/Edsel - Meat
LAZ - something mostly prepared in advance
Jean Blanchard, Kerry Beal, CaliPoutine - Dessert
nyokie6 - Dessert or Pasta
Sous Cooks
Fresser
Possible Components people could bring prepared if cooks want them
Fig jam - CaliPoutine
Caponata - Jean Blanchard
Things are shaping up pretty well for head cooks, but we still have room for another one or two! Also, I figured we might as well start assembling a list of people who are particularly interested in being sous cooks, so head cooks could start assembling a team if they are so inclined. If you want to lend a hand in the kitchen, please speak up and I'll add you to the list.
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I have a 6. I estimate it's about about 12 molds worth that you have to do each time for an ideal amount of chocolate. This way, it's a good pool that stays tempered, you have enough chocolate left in the pan afterwards to melt and seed and do 12 more molds and repeat the cycle. As said before, if you do less, I don't think yo uhave an ideal pool of chocolate.
If you have a 3, you can still do molds, just dump the excess onto parchment or marble sheet. Or else dump the excess into a really big bowl. Then dump back into the melter being careful of overcrystallization. Or else just reserve the chocolate for later use. This is what I did when I used my ACMC table top temperer.
I dump my molds back into the 3. You just have to be careful about it. I work on an angle, then give a shake before putting it on a rack to finish setting. Works fine, and I don't get lopsided shells.
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I'm waffling between the 6 and the 3 again. Any advice would be welcome...
It's for home use only, and I'll probably be doing mostly dipped chocolates (which makes me lean towards the 3), but I do have molds I'd like to use as well (which makes me lean towards the 6), though not as often as dipped.
Thanks everyone...
I'd recommend the 3. It's really ideal for dipping, and you don't have temper so much chocolate to get a good pool to work from. I've made thousands of molded chocolates from my 3 - it's a little messy, but it works just fine.
If you change your mind, you can always sell it on eBay and get back most of the value. That's where I got mine!
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Hi
I'd like to help. I would be happy to help someone or I can cook. I'm just a home cook but I could do brownies or an apple cobbler. I also can do vegtables with pasta as a side dish for a large group, but it will have dried pasta(with onions, mushrooms, spinach, fresh herbs and whatever else looks good at the market).
Also what about wine? I'd be happy to buy a case of prosecco. Not having been in the past I don"t know what your proceedure is. We will be flying in on Wed. and staying around the Hyatt/Michagan Av. area and will not have a car.
Tobi
Most of us are just home cooks, Tobi, so no problem there. You sound more confident about dessert than a side dish - should I put you down for that?
Re. wine - i think the plan was to use some of the dinner funds to purchase wine. i expect there will be a wine buying excursion on Saturday...
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Sharing space with hot ovens is not going to be good on the chocolate, sadly.
But a couple of people up-thread indicated that they had kitchens for possible use, but that they only had one oven, which made them less than ideal for the bread workshop. We probably don't need any ovens for the chocolate workshop, so perhaps one of those would be a possibility for that?
I'm wracking my brain trying to come up with creative ideas for kitchen space for both groups. Hmmm.
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In discussion with Tammy it seems that the most logical time and place for a chocolate workshop is on Friday afternoon. We will need to find someone local who has (air conditioned) space available for us to work in.
So anyone with an idea of where we could hold it - let me know - and then we will see who else wants to join in.
Calipoutine and I get off the train around 11:30 on Friday, so we just need to allow enough time to stop off at the hotel and for me to find my way to the workshop location.
You should also take into account that Amtrak frequently runs an hour late.
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Alex, I'm not Ronnie, but I will say that in the past we've gathered at the dinner location around 1 pm. Shopping takes a few hours in the morning, and then people usually do lunch and convene in the afternoon to start prepping and cooking. Sometimes there are afternoon activities, like the chocolate tasting in Cleveland or wine tasting in Ann Arbor. We usually start serving around 6 or 7.
Plan: 2008 Heartland Gathering in Chicago Aug 8-10
in The Heartland: Dining
Posted · Edited by tammylc (log)
Heartland Gathering Cooks Update
Bread
Tino27 - 3 loaves of honey whole wheat bread, 3 loaves of Red and Black bread, 3 loaves of olive rosemary bread, 2 loaves of sweet potato bread - Cooks, if you'd like to claim any of this bread for your course, please speak up
Pre-Dinner Noshing - Remember folks, we want to have room for dinner. You don't need to bring huge quantities!
nyokie6 & LAZ - cheese
HOLLY_L - chicken liver pate
Fig jam - CaliPoutine - Now that we have a cheese plate, go for it, Randi!
Caponata - Jean Blanchard - good for afternoon noshing with cheese and pate and the like? If so, bring along!
Pacific Northwest treats - White Lotus & Dance - same as my comment to Jean - if you want to bring some things to put out for afternoon noshing, that would be lovely.
Tea - White Lotus - we don't have any activities planned for Saturday afternoon, I bet some people would find a short tea tasting interesting, if you wanted to host something like that.
Dinner
tammylc - Amuse
Alex - Soup (cool)
CaliPoutine - Composed Salad
Marmish - Salad or Side
LAZ - something mostly prepared in advance
Lucky Girl - Beets 3 Ways or something else
santo_grace - Cold Shrimp dish or Corn/Bacon/Cream dish
Ronnie Suburban - BBQ
NancyH/Bob/Edsel - Meat
Dessert
Jean Blanchard
Kerry Beal
CaliPoutine
Sous Cooks
Fresser
KarenM
Prsantrin
White Lotus
Dance
Chris (tino27's +1)
Tino27
We're still looking for a wine shopper. Is there anyone interested in that?